NHL 07 Hands-on

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Snapping wrist shots never felt so good in EA's next-gen hockey debut.

By Jonathan Miller

Kiss the one-timer goodbye.

One of hockey's most exciting moves has ironically been holding hockey videogames back for some time. For whatever reason, playing hockey videogames has become increasingly about lining up a one-timer with a teammate -- sometimes you'll even slow up on a breakaway just so a streaking teammate can catch up. Turn on OLN and see how many times that happens in a real hockey game.

With EA's upcoming NHL on the Xbox 360, the days of depending on one-timers to turn on the red light have come to an end. Sure, you can still execute a perfect pass and fire a slap shot in for a one-time goal, but that may happen only once every other game now, give or take. Thanks to the evolution of hockey control with the right analog skill stick, you'll fire slap shots, snap wrist shots and poke the puck through the five hole, and you probably aren't going to see the same goal twice, thanks to some very impressive puck physics. More on that later.

Faking out the goalie is what hockey is all about.

There is a serious learning curve for the skill stick since we've been playing the same basic hockey controls since NHLPA 93 on the Genesis. Think of the right analog stick as your hockey stick. Move it right, you move the puck right. Move it left... you get the idea. Pull down to wind up for a slap shot and push up to fire at the goal. Simply let go of the stick and try to induce a defender to lay out to block a shot while you skate on by. Move left and right to deke through the defense. Move right and then roll back to the left for a 360 deke. Move left and roll up for a top shelf-backhand. The list of moves goes on and on, and this year hockey is not about canned animations -- it's about creating your own goals.

Like Ovechkin, this game is still growing.

It took about 20 games before I was completely comfortable with the skill stick, to where I could throw a triple-deke on a goalie on a breakaway and flip a wrister top shelf without so much as a second thought. It's strange how foreign the controller will feel in your hand the first time you play. It's even stranger how once you learn the basic moves you open up a different level of more advanced play, like dumping the puck, circulating the puck, probing the defense and working for a good shot.